He grabbed the nearest sailor. “You. Get below, find rags. Make small bags of them. Stuff them with gunpowder and anything little and sharp. Nails. Tie it all up, set a joss stick down the neck of each bag, and bring them all back here, ten at a time. Light them, throw them out the gunports. Try to get them into their gunports, when they pull their cannons back to load them. Understand? Go.”

Then Arin looked for the sailor whose expression looked most like his own must, and told him to take charge. Arin was going to board that Valorian ship.

Up onto the deck, into the blue and smoky black. Sword in the right hand, dagger in the left. Valorians on his ship already. Their vessel was close enough to board. Arin ducked. Sliced. His sword beat back a thrust and he drove in with his dagger, found a soft belly. Steaming liquid up to the wrist, running to the elbow.

Arin worked his way to the railing. He heard crossbow quarrels. They didn’t touch him. His god rose within him: silent, approving. Arin leaped onto the Valorian ship. A blade came at him. He caught it with his own, parried, snaked his sword up for a thrust into the man’s arm where the leather armor joined. Dagger to the neck. Both weapons snatched back out of the flesh, the metal oily red. Body at his feet.

He saw a package launch out of the Herrani ship’s gun hole. Then another. An explosion belowdeck trembled the boards. Another.

Then, incredibly, over the din of cannons and screams, he heard a slight sound. He spun, and came face-to-face with a Valorian. A woman. Fair hair, dark eyes.

He dropped his guard.

She went for his neck. He jerked away at the last moment, caught the sword in his left shoulder. A surge of wet, running pain.

“No,” he said in her language. “Wait.”

She thrust again.

He parried her this time, his sword coming instinctively up, his good arm bending her blade back, not even pushing hard. A part of him watched this in horror, saw how easily the woman’s arm bent. She was his age. Her face was not like Kestrel’s but not very different either. As if she were Kestrel’s sister.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen a woman in battle. He’d just never killed one.

He knocked the sword from her hand.

He saw his sister’s corpse in the street. His mother’s jetting blood. His arm moved. He screamed at it to stop. Then he didn’t see anything until he saw that he’d dropped his sword. His dagger? Gone, too.

The Valorian had her dagger in her hand. There was the flash of an incredulous, vicious grin. Then she drove the heel of her boot down onto his rag-covered foot and stabbed toward his heart.

His foot seemed to explode. He reeled, then somehow managed to turn the movement into a sidestep away from the dagger’s thrust. He snatched her wrist. Forced her hand to open.

With her free hand, she punched his throat.

Arin.

Dimly, gasping, he became aware of the bright arc of her dagger coming toward him.

You’re going to get yourself killed.

He swerved away. The weapon came again, cut him. He couldn’t tell where.

In my name, you said.

You swore to serve.

Arin went low.

Are you not mine? Am I not yours?

His hand fumbled and grabbed.

To whom else would you ever belong?

Listen, my child.

My love.

Listen.

His ears were loud with silence. He saw.

Wide brown eyes. A slender body folded over his sword.

Which was in his hand.

The bloody dagger fell from hers.

Afterward, the captain directed the plunder of the ship. It was well stocked with food—and, more important, black powder.

The captain was pleased. He called Arin’s little explosive bags a gods-given stroke of brilliance. They’d surprised the Valorian gunners, who took nails in the flesh and couldn’t see through the smoke. “Very nasty, very nice.”

Arin said nothing.

The captain studied him, lingering over the bloodier parts. “You’ll heal fine.” He squinted down at Arin’s feet. “You need boots.”

Arin shrugged. He realized that he didn’t dare speak. He felt hollow, horrified at what he’d done even though he would have been killed if he hadn’t, and it shouldn’t have made a difference whether a Valorian he fought was a man or a woman. If he’d been asked before this whether both men and women had the right to war, he would have said yes. If asked whether men and women were equal, he would’ve said yes. Should they be treated the same? Yes. By that logic, no mercy to men meant no mercy to women. But Arin didn’t feel logical. He disgusted himself.

She’d been fierce, determined. Kestrel would have been like that.